What is the difference between a head keyword and a long tail keyword?

What is the difference between a head keyword and a long tail keyword? Yoast says, "The head keyword is a general term lots of people write about. A long tail keyword is a more specific topic or a subtopic of the head term." Long tail keywords are great when trying to reach a specific audience. Once you narrow down and find the perfect niche for your business long tail keywords can help you rank well within it. Conversions are often higher when you reach a niche audience as well! Using a healthy mix of head keywords and long tail keywords is a winning strategy!

Do you have all these SEO basics covered? Always make sure you have these basic SEO techniques working properly. First, make sure your website is secure! You don't want site visitors getting an alert that they might be going to a website that is not secure because they might turn back and find a different website. It should also load quickly on both desktop and mobile. Check that every page has an H1 tag, then add H2-H4 tags. Ink and Quill said, "Each page has one H1 tag, but it can have multiple H2–H4 tags. As a reader, you’ll see these tags as bigger, bolder headers that separate blocks of text. So they work to help drive eyes through your content as well as to tell Google what your pages are about." Finally, update your website frequently with fresh content!

The SEO Basics Your Website Must Have - Ink & Quill Communications

http://iq-communications.com

Your business surely has a website, but does it have the SEO basics that will help it really pull in customers?Your SEO basics for blogs are: While there’s not a “perfect” increment in which to blog, you should be adding [...]

Search engine optimization can be a learning process, but you can learn from mistakes others have made! Keyword research is one place you can go wrong. Take your time to get it right! Best in AU said, "It shouldn't be rushed and needs to be flexible, meaning you can change your list at any time. You need to have a solid mix of competitive and non-competitive keywords, as well as hort and long-tail keywords." Once you have your keywords pay attention to the technical SEO. This tends to be something that gets overlooked or pushed off, but it's very important! Finally, don't get sucked into keyword stuffing, it doesn't work anymore!

5 of the Most Basic SEO Mistakes People Still Make

http://bestinau.com.au

Take a look below at some of the most common SEO mistakes people make: Many people tend to put off implementing an SEO strategy for two main reasons; one, they don’t understand SEO and the benefits, or two, they do [...]

More than 25 million websites feature Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Initially launched by Google in February 2016, it's become an increasingly popular framework for creating fast, mobile-friendly website content. A study conducted by Adobe found that 7 percent of all online traffic from the top U.S. publishers' websites consists of AMP content. As a webmaster, though, you might be wondering how AMP works and whether you should implement it on your site.

Overview of AMP

AMP is an open-source project backed by Google that provides standards for creating mobile-optimized web pages. Using the AMP framework, you can create separate, mobile-friendly versions of your web pages that look great and load quickly on smartphones and tablets. Available for free at AMPProject.org, AMP consists of three primary components:

AMP HTML: A form of HTML that includes AMP elements with restrictions on certain traditional HTML elements.

You can see listings for AMP web pages in the Google's and Bing's mobile search results. Using your smartphone or tablet, perform a Google or Bing search for a trending news story and look at the results. A small lightning bolt icon in the upper-left corner identify AMP listings.

On Google, you'll also see AMP listings in a "Top Stories" carousel. Found at the top of Google's results page, this digital real estate only displays AMP listings. You can scroll through AMP web pages related to a specific search query by sliding your finger to the right of the carousel. Some websites may have a carousel slider of their own in Google's search results if they contain multiple AMP web pages.

Benefits of AMP

Google doesn't require webmasters to use the AMP framework; you can build a popular, successful website using traditional HTML and CSS. However, using AMP offers several benefits that users shouldn't ignore. According to a study conducted by Google, visitors spend twice as much time on AMP web pages than non-AMP web pages. For e-commerce websites, Google says that online retailers with AMP web pages generate 20 percent more sales than their counterparts.

The real beauty of AMP lies in its ability to reduce page load times. During the company's I/O developer conference in 2017, a Google spokesperson explained that AMP web pages load in half the time that it takes traditional web pages to load. If it takes visitors six seconds to load your website's homepage, creating an AMP version means that mobile visitors can load it in just three seconds.

Google hasn't confirmed the use of AMP as a ranking signal, but implementing it on your website may encourage higher search rankings nonetheless. Since 2010, Google's algorithm has given preference to fast-loading web pages by ranking them higher in the search results than slow-loading web pages. And with AMP's emphasis on speed, the framework may indirectly improve your website's search rankings by reducing its load time.

Google also displays AMP web pages in different areas of its search results than traditional listings. For specific search queries, such as news and current events, Google shows a "Top Stories" carousel that only contains AMP listings. By adopting the AMP framework on your website, Google may display some of your web pages in this carousel.

Creating AMP Web Pages

To use AMP on your website, you must create a separate version of each page that you want to feature Google's mobile-optimized standard. Your site will mainly consist of two versions of each page: the standard version and the AMP version. When Google or Bing discover an AMP version, they'll index it instead of the standard version in their mobile search results.

AMProject.org offers all the tutorials you need to create AMP web pages. If this is your time using the framework, though, you should be aware that it doesn't support JavaScript. Instead, all JavaScript processes get handled with AMP JS. If you have web pages with JavaScript elements, such as a visitor commenting feature or online contact form, you may have to remove those elements from the AMP version of the page. Otherwise, the web page won't render as a valid AMP.

You must also handle images differently when adopting the AMP framework. When creating an AMP web page, you must give all pictures the amp-img HTML element. Furthermore, you must define the height and width of all images. Depending on how many AMP web pages you intend to create, this can be a tedious process, but it's necessary to develop valid AMP code.

If WordPress powers your website, there's a more natural way to adopt the AMP framework: install an AMP plugin. AMP for WordPress, for example, is a free plugin that automatically creates a separate AMP web page for every page on your website. The URLs for the plugin's newly created AMP web pages are affixed with "/amp" at the end, allowing search engines and visitors to differentiate between the two.

There's also AMP for WP - Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is a more customizable AMP plugin. It's available in both a free and paid version, the latter of which comes with premium support as well as features like a contact form, newsletter signup form, custom fields, product ratings, call-to-action (CTA) buttons and more. For basic AMP conversion, though, the free version of the plugin should suffice.

You can see if a web page features valid AMP code by using Google's online validation tool at Validator.AMPProject.org. If it fails the test, the validation tool will reveal what changes you need to make.

Creating separate AMP web pages for your website takes time and work. However, with Google doubling down on the AMP project, as well as Bing's newfound support for the framework, it can help your website attract more search traffic and achieve greater success. Whether you do it manually or automate the process with a WordPress plugin, create an AMP version of your site's web pages to take advantage of these benefits.

What Is Google AMP and How Will Affect Your Website's Traffic?

More than 25 million websites feature Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Initially launched by Google in February 2016, it's become an increasingly popular framework for creating fast, mobile-friendly website content. A study conducted by Adobe found that 7 percent of all [...]